Morning Read:
Dictator
¶ In Lord Chesterfield’s letter of 20 July 1749, two gems. “Moral virtues are the foundation of society in general, and of friendship in particular; but attentions, manners, and graces both adorn and strengthen them”; and — referring to time lost by his son to a recent illness — “At present you should be a good economist of your moments…”
I don’t think that Chesterfield has anything foppish in mind when he speaks of “attentions, manners, and graces.” I expect that they modulations toward understatement. Graces, for example, may be noted by an attentive observer, but they don’t attract attention from other objects.
¶ In Moby-Dick, “The Great Armada” left me feeling severely dyslexic, as I could not follow the action at all. There was a school of whales ahead of the Pequod, I think, and a fleet of Malacca pirates behind. Looking over the gunwhales of his skiff, Ishmael reports, with clubbing tact, that “When overflowing with mutual esteem, the whales salute more hominum.” I think that this means that the males sport visible erections, but maybe that’s just my dirty mind.
¶ Chapter XIV of Don Quixote, however, is laugh-out-loud funny, at least if you haven’t forgotten that Quixote and Sancho meet the Knight of the Wood and his squire in the dark. I wish that my Spanish were up to assessing whether the original is as wonderfully fruity as Edith Grossman’s translation:
By this time a thousand different kinds of brightly colored birds began to warble in the trees, and with their varied and joyous songs they seemed to welcome and greet the new dawn, who, through the doors and balconies [las puertas y balcones] of the Orient, was revealing the beauty of her face and shaking from her hair an infinite number of liquid pearls whose gentle liquor bathed the plants that seemed, in turn, to send forth buds and rain down tiny white pearls; the willows dripped their sweet-tasting manna, the fountains laughed, the streams murmured, the woods rejoiced, and the meadows flourished with her arrival. But as soon as the light of day made it possible to see and distinguish one thing from another, the first thing that appeared before Sancho Panza’s eyes was the nose of the Squire of the Wood, which was so big it almost cast a shadow over the rest of his body. In fact, it is recounted that his nose was outlandishly large, hooked in the middle, covered with warts, and of a purplish color like an eggplant; it came down the width of two fingers past his mouth, and its size, color, warts, and curvature made his face so hideous that when Sancho saw him his feet and hands started to tremble, like a child having seizures, and he decided in his heart to let himself be slapped two hundred times before he would allow his anger to awaken and then fight with that monster.
The whole episode is gloriously fishy, because the Knight of the Wood — revealed by daylight to be the Knight of the Mirrors — seems to be even dottier than Don Quixote. Long as it is, this sentence ends adorably:
While Don Quixote stopped to help Sancho into the cork tree, the Knight of the Mirrors took as much of the field as he thought necessary, and believing that Don Quixote had done the same, and not waiting for the sound of a trumpet or any other warning, he turned the reins of his horse — who was in fact no faster or better looking than Rocinante — and at his full gallop, which was a medium trot, he rode to encounter his enemy, but seeing him occupied with Sancho’s climb, he checked the reins and stopped in the middle of the charge, for which his horse was extremely grateful, since he could no longer move [de lo que el caballo quedó agradecidísmo, a causa que ya no podía moverse].
¶ Chapter 21 of Squillions, “Sigh Once More…And a Storm in the Pacific,” is relatively brief, and almost wholly devoted to the ill-fated partnership that Noël Coward entered into with Mary Martin, of all people, for the premiere of his new operette, Pacific 1860. What had seemed like a good idea in New York did not cross the Atlantic. Letters were exchanged… including a rather long one from Coward that it seems surprising of Martin to have saved. Just one teeny-tiny paragraph:
Pacific 1860 is, according to these statistics which I think are correct, the fifth theatrical production with which you have been connectedc. It is the forty-seventh theatrical production with which I have been concerned since 1920. For your performance you are paid by the management the biggest star salary payable in this Country ie ten per cent of the gross and have been given full transport for yourself and party. You arrived in this country full of friendliness and enthusiasm with a completely wrong conception of the part of Elena Salvador. This you have frequently admitted to me yourself. You accuse me in your letter of being a dictator. What you are really accusing me of is being a director. I have tried, with the utmost gentleness and patience, to guide and help you into understanding and playing Elena. Not only am I the director but I am also the author and creator of the character, therefore, I am afraid my conception must logically supersede yours. You worked extremely hard, not only up to production but after production, to play the part as I wished it played. You were on the verge of succeeding when, on account of some highly irrational and quite inaccurate opinions of your own about period clothes, you proceeded to throw away all that our joint efforts had so nearly achieved.
The envoi is priceless, both dishy and, I’m sure, sincere.
I am writing to you as a man of the theatre of many years standing who is full of admiration of your personality, charm and talent and who also sees, perhaps more than you realise, how many years of hard work, possible disappointments and the humble acceptance of superior knowledge lie ahead of you before you achieve the true reward that your ambition demands.